In this chapter from My MacBook (Yosemite Edition), you learn how to use your Mac to share and access resources over a network, including sharing files and folders using AirDrop and File Sharing, file sharing with Windows computers, setting Share Permissions, using the Share menu to quickly share files online, sharing and accessing network printers, sharing your screen and viewing remote systems, and turning your Mac into an Internet Access Point.

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

In this chapter, you learn how to use your Mac to share and access resources over a network, including:

Sharing files and folders using AirDrop and File Sharing

File sharing with Windows computers

Setting Share Permissions

Using the Share menu to quickly share files online

Sharing and accessing network printers

Sharing your screen and viewing remote systems

Turning your Mac into an Internet Access Point

Your Mac is a self-contained workstation that packs all the power you need into a highly integrated package—and one that is fully capable of integrating with new or existing networks. Yosemite can share and access a variety of resources with other computers on your network. Files and folders can be shared with other Macs and Windows PCs; printers can be shared with other Macs; even your screen can be made available to other computers on your network.

To make the most use of the information in this chapter, the assumption is that you’ve already established a network connection and have connected any printers or scanners to either your Mac or another Yosemite-based Macintosh on your network. You might want to refer to Chapter 3, “Connecting Your Mac to a Network,” and Chapter 12, “Using Yosemite with Your iDevices,” for more details on networking and peripherals, respectively.

File Sharing on Your Mac

The most common network activity (beyond email and web surfing) is file sharing. Your Mac comes ready to share files using several popular protocols—AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) and SMB (Simple Message Block) are the most popular. AFP, as the name suggests, is a Mac-to-Mac file sharing protocol, but with Yosemite, Apple has switched to SMB as the preferred protocol. SMB has traditionally been used primarily in Windows environments and offers significant performance improvements over AFP.

In addition to the protocols for sharing files, you also have different methods for how you share them. Traditional file sharing requires that you turn on file sharing, choose what you want to share, tell another person how to connect, and so on. With Yosemite, your Mac includes a zero-configuration version of file sharing called AirDrop. AirDrop enables you to wirelessly share files with other users who are in your vicinity—with no setup required!

Authenticate to Make Changes!

Many of the settings in this chapter require you to authenticate with Yosemite before the settings can be made. If you find yourself in a situation where a setting is grayed out, click the padlock icon in the lower-left corner of the window to authenticate and make the necessary change.

Using AirDrop to Wirelessly Share Files and Folders

AirDrop is a fast and easy file-sharing system that enables you to send files to another Macintosh without any setup—no usernames, no passwords, nothing except a Wi-Fi adapter that is turned on! Unlike traditional file sharing, AirDrop’s simplicity does present a few challenges that might make it less than ideal for your particular file-sharing situation. Specifically, AirDrop requires the following:

All computers sharing files must be using the Lion (or later) operating system.

All systems must have recent wireless-AC or N Wi-Fi hardware—2011 or later Macs will work fine.

Your computer will not be able to browse the contents of other systems, only send files.

Configuring AirDrop

Before you get started using AirDrop, you might want to make a few changes to help restrict or open access to the service. To modify who can see you (and whom you can see!), complete the following:

Open a new Finder window and make sure the Favorites sidebar section is expanded.

Click the AirDrop icon.

Click the Allow Others to Find Me option to choose whether you are visible to everyone, just people in your contacts, or no one.

The files are copied to the remote system. A blue circle around the receiving computer indicates progress.

Close the AirDrop window to stop being visible on the network. After you’ve closed the AirDrop window, you can go your merry way. You don’t need to disconnect or change your network settings. You’re done!

AirDrop uses peer-to-peer ad hoc wireless networking, which is only supported in recent Macs (2011 and later). Although this may seem limiting, this hardware is what makes it possible to communicate with zero configuration and without using a common Wi-Fi access point.

Using the Share Menu to Send via AirDrop

The Share menu is a relatively new user interface (UI) element and feature in OS X. It enables applications to share files and folders from almost anywhere—even file open and save dialog boxes, as you’ll see here.

The Share menu is much more powerful than just sharing via AirDrop. We look at a few other sharing scenarios that use this feature later in this chapter.

Configuring Traditional File and Folder Sharing

When AirDrop won’t do (you need to browse another computer’s files or share with Windows/older Macs), you need to turn to the traditional file sharing features built into OS X. Yosemite provides consolidated controls for sharing files, regardless of what type of computer you want to share them with. You set up file sharing by first enabling sharing for your Mac and then choosing the protocols available for accessing the files. Finally, you decide which folders should be shared and who should see them.

Enabling File Sharing

Before your Mac can make any files or folders available over a network, you must enable File Sharing.

Check or uncheck the protocols that you want to use. If you are only sharing between Yosemite machines, all you need is SMB.

If you want to use SMB to share specifically with Windows systems, you must enable each account for access. Within the Windows File Sharing section, check the box in front of each user that should be allowed to connect.

>>>Go Further: What Is with the Account Checkboxes and Passwords for Windows File Sharing?

To share with Windows clients, the Yosemite SMB implementation requires that user accounts and passwords be stored in a different format than how they are used natively by OS X. By enabling or disabling accounts for Windows File, you are creating the user authentication information that Windows users will need to connect.

Selecting Folders and Permissions

After enabling file sharing and choosing the protocols that are used, your next step is to pick the folders that can be shared. By default, each user’s Public folder is shared and accessible by anyone with an account on your computer. (See Chapter 14, “Securing and Protecting Your Mac,” for configuring user accounts.)

Shared folders can have the following permissions set on a per-user or per-group basis:

Read & Write—Grants full access to the folder and files within it. Users can add, edit, and delete items within the folder.

Read Only—Provides access to the files in the folder, but users cannot modify or delete them, nor can they create new files or folders.

Write Only (Drop Box)—Allows users to write to the folder, but not see its contents.

No Access—Available only for the Everyone group; disables access for all user accounts except those explicitly granted access in the permissions.

Accessing Shared Files

Shared files are only useful if you can access them! Your Mac provides two methods of connecting to shared folders: by browsing for them on your local network and by entering a URL to connect directly to the shared resource.

Browsing and Connecting to Network Shares

Browsing and connecting to a local network share is similar to browsing through the folders located on your Mac. To browse for available network shares, do the following:

Open a new Finder window and make sure the Shared sidebar section is expanded.

Click the computer that is sharing the folders and files that you want to access.

If you have not logged into the computer before and saved your password, a list of the publicly accessible file shares is displayed in the Finder window.

You may notice when connecting to other Yosemite or Mountain Lion servers that you are given the option of connecting with your Apple ID. This will work if your account has had an Apple ID associated with it on the remote server. This association is made by selecting a user within the Users & Groups System Preferences panel and then clicking the Set button that is next to the Apple ID field.

Browsing Large Networks

If there are many different computers sharing files on your network, you can browse them in a Finder window rather than the Finder sidebar. To open a Finder window that browses your network, choose Go, Network from the menu bar, or click the All... icon within the Shared section of the Finder sidebar.

Connecting to Remote Shares

Sometimes file shares aren’t directly browseable because they’re hiding their available shares, or they are located on a different network from your Mac. To access remote shares by URL, follow these steps:

When you create a new file share on your Mac, Yosemite provides you with a list of URLs that can be used to access that file share (see step 3 of “Enabling File Sharing”). You can use these URLs to directly access a file share rather than browsing.

Your Windows friends might give you network shares to connect to in the format \\servername\sharename. You can translate this into a “Mac-friendly” URL by adding the prefix smb: and reversing the direction of the slashes—that is, smb://servername/sharename.